About 550,000 accounts were blocked by Meta during the first days of Australia's landmark social media ban for kids.
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The company said it blocked 330,639 accounts on Instagram, 173,497 on Facebook, and 39,916 on Threads during it's first week of compliance with the new law.
Legitimately a little surprised that they found that many facebook accounts to hit, and shocked the threads is more than a couple of dozen (what kind of kid is on threads?). Instagram makes sense as the largest number.
They again put the argument that age verification should happen at an app store level – something they suggested lowers the burden of compliance on both regulators and the apps themselves – and that exemptions for parental approval should be created.
Interesting that they seem have pulled back on the 'broader' push-back they were going with prior, and are now instead just wanting it to be someone else's problem (google or apple).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqye2yygl4o
11 Comments
“shocked the threads is more than a couple of dozen (what kind of kid is on threads?)”
They may not necessarily be kids – just accounts that don’t look they meet the age limit based on whatever data Meta collected back when no one cared about this. Easy to imagine that a substantial percentage relates to incorrect data.
Anyone know any kids that haven’t gotten around it? My sample size is only 2 but they both got around it and hid their use from the parents for a few weeks before being caught.
Just taught those kids to hide their activities from authority.
I asked my friends kids 4 of them the other day if the ban has affected them at all and only the eldest who is 17 has had her socials shut down, great job.
I would probably have got bullied because the algorithm would recognise I’m young but not my friends lol. I went to the kind of school where you got teased for being a bad student.
I have five kids and they still watch YouTube but now they get ads. I think it’s because they just can’t have an account?
My son and literally every single one of his friends haven’t been so much as checked. They’re all still on social media.
I frustratingly just tried to create a new account for messenger over the weekend and was blocked. No reason given. It then asked to take a L-R video of my face – I guess for age verification but was still denied because of… guidelines. No actual reason provided. No further appeal available either. PITA.
My kids are completely off all social media as a result of this ban.
I tried to resign up to Facebook today for and they immediately suspended the account. I decided that I was right to have deleted it and I’m staying off.
I’m not a kid, but do me next! 🙋♀️
There’s a melbourne metal band called ScarnOn who have lost their insta page because the drummer’s kids (mid to late teens) also play in the band. His oldest boy started the band. He (dad) jumped through all the ID requirements hoops and was still not able to access his page. He appealed and was denied and their page is gone.
Yet influencers plaster their kids all over socials… what happens there?
Pushing it to app stores is lazy and ineffective, moreso than anything else they could do. Their platforms are accessible through the web, and they’d be depriving people of access in logged-out states, though I will say I don’t know how exactly how much of Facebook and Insta are accessible logged out.